It’s been a rough couple of days for fans of classic (i.e., ’60s and ’70s vintage) TV. Over the weekend, we learned of the deaths of Don Knotts and Darren McGavin, and just yesterday afternoon I heard that Dennis Weaver has died as well.

Knotts is, of course, best known for playing Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, a character so firmly defined in the public consciousness that his name has become shorthand for a particular type of small-town law enforcement officer who thinks he’s far more capable and important than he really is. But there’s a lot more to Barney than just a bumbling screw-up with delusions of grandeur; he’s an utterly sympathetic character that the audience identifies with even as we’re shaking our heads at his cluelessness. I believe the success and likability of Barney Fife as a character is entirely because of Don Knotts. In the hands of another actor, Barney as he was written would’ve been obnoxious at best, if not downright painful to watch. (Witness the character who replaced Barney when Knotts left the show, the insufferably tedious Warren Ferguson. Arg.)

Knotts’ genius in creating Barney was to make him painfully insecure, rather than merely incompetent. When he does screw up, it’s usually because he’s so eager to prove that he really deserves his badge. Andy understands that somewhere inside Barney Fife is a decent policeman who just needs a dose of self-confidence, and so he plays along, secretly fixing the messes that Barney makes and trying to help his deputy find himself.

Yes, folks, it’s true, I am a fan of TAGS, at least of the first few seasons (not surprisingly, these are the ones that feature Don Knotts). I concede that it’s corny, and by modern standards the scripts are often a little slow and not exactly what you’d call knee-slappingly funny. The show is also very un-PC, especially in its treatment of women characters. (For example, there was an episode where Andy’s masculine pride is badly wounded because the woman he’s dating out-does him at a skeet-shooting contest. Tellingly on a series that featured many recurring girlfriends for the good Sheriff of Mayberry, we never saw that character again.) But TAGS is also genuinely decent and warmhearted without being sappy, and it’s generally pretty honest about the realities of small-town life, the petty jealousies and the problems that arise when everyone knows everyone else’s business. The show suffered greatly when Knotts left midway through its run; the writers brought forward other characters to fill the hole where Barney used to be, and in the process they lost much of the tone that defined the series in the first place. I think that alone speaks volumes about the talent of Don Knotts.

I don’t believe any of Darren McGavin’s characters attained the household-name recognition of Barney Fife, but most people would know him as Ralphie’s Old Man from the delightful movie A Christmas Story. A more important McGavin role was Carl Kolchak in The Night Stalker, an early-70s TV movie that is better known today by reputation than because anyone under the age of 40 has actually seen it. I’ve seen it, of course, and quite enjoyed it. It’s a clever take on the vampire genre, with two-bit investigative reporter Kolchak slowly coming to realize that the serial killer preying on Las Vegas showgirls isn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill psycho. McGavin’s performance is a perfect balance of tongue-in-cheek self-awareness and hard-nosed cynicism.

The Night Stalker was a big success in the ratings, which naturally led to a sequel movie (The Night Strangler) and a short-lived weekly series in which Kolchak investigated a new supernatural menace every week, hoping to finally find the story that would be believed and make his career. Unfortunately, these sequels weren’t anywhere near as crisp as the original movie, and McGavin himself asked the network to pull the plug on Carl Kolchak. Still, the entire Kolchak oeuvre was influential; echoes of Kolchak’s investigations can easily be seen in The X Files and, to a lesser extent, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A brief sidenote: The Night Stalker series was revived just this past season with a young, hunky Kolchak played by Stuart Townsend (who, ironically enough, portrayed a vampire himself in the atrocious Queen of the Damned). I didn’t see any episodes of this remake before its cancellation, though I suspect McGavin’s version was probably better. Even with the hideous fashions of the day.

Finally, we come to Dennis Weaver, a man whose lanky frame, push-broom mustache, and easy-going demeanor ensured he would play lots of cowboys in his day. The official obituaries are all commenting on his stints on Gunsmoke, the longest-running Western series of all time, and McCloud, a police series that played on the fish-out-of-water trope by dropping a New Mexico detective into the middle of New York City. I can vaguely recall that my mother enjoyed McCloud, but I must admit that I really don’t remember either of these shows. No, in my mind, Dennis Weaver will always be the milquetoast everyman pursued across the desert by an unseen psycho in the biggest, filthiest diesel ever put on film. Specifically, a film called Duel. This was originally a TV movie as well, directed by a young up-and-comer who, I understand, has gone on to find some small measure of success. It was a great movie, and a great performance that required Weaver to become progressively more frightened, then resolute, and finally, utterly ruthless in order to survive.

Looking around the blogosphere, I was surprised to find so little mention of Darren McGavin. He was, by all accounts, a very private man and it seems that no one had any anecdotes to tell about him beyond what I said myself about Kolchak and The Old Man. Don Knotts was another matter, however; pop-culture critic Jaime J. Weinman paid tribute to him here, while Evanier reminisces about him here and here. Finally, a blogger who is new to me, Booksteve, discusses Knotts’ post-Mayberry movie career in this post.

Evanier and Booksteve both pay tribute to Dennis Weaver as well. Evanier chose to write about Weaver’s charitable work, while Booksteve pays tribute to Weaver’s signature role, McCloud.